The City of Chicago doesn't owe Anthony Porter any money. But it owes him a big apology.

A Cook County jury last week ruled against Porter at a civil trial in which he contended that police conspired to frame him for a 1982 double murder.

Porter spent 16 years on Death Row for that crime and was 50 hours and 22 minutes away from a lethal injection before he was granted a reprieve based on a long-shot claim of mental incompetency.

The reprieve ignited a volunteer investigation into his case that led to Porter's release from prison in 1999.

Yet Tuesday, shortly after the jury's verdict was announced, Walter Jones, the attorney representing the city, pointed to the table in the courtroom where Porter sat during the trial and told Tribune reporter Charles Sheehan: "The killer has been sitting in that room right there all day."

It was a stunning, graceless and infamous accusation.

Anthony Porter was innocent.

We know this because the first people to go to the South Side park and re-enact the crime--a group of student sleuths from Northwestern University--proved that the witness who fingered Porter couldn't have seen what he said he did from where he said he was standing.

We know this because the Northwestern team found an alternative suspect, Alstory Simon of Milwaukee, and Simon gave a detailed, 10-minute confession on videotape when private investigator Paul Ciolino went to his house and confronted him with evidence against him.

We know this because Simon's estranged wife signed an affidavit saying she witnessed Simon shoot the victims during a dispute over drug money, just as Simon said to Ciolino.

We know this because Simon pleaded guilty to the murders (though he later tried and failed to have the courts let him withdraw those pleas on the grounds that he was tricked into falsely confessing by the wily Northwestern team).

And we know this because in May 2000, the Illinois Court of Claims awarded Porter $145,875 in restitution for 16 years of "unjust imprisonment."

We know, in short, that Porter's case was a flagrant and frightening miscarriage of justice--one that then-Gov. George Ryan alluded to less than a year after Porter's release when he announced the start of a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois that is still in effect.

"I cannot support a system which, in its administration, has proven so fraught with errors and has come so close to the ultimate nightmare, the state's taking of an innocent life," Ryan said. "How do you prevent another Anthony Porter--another innocent man or woman from paying the ultimate penalty for a crime he or she did not commit?"

A jury that listened to all the evidence in the civil trial did not agree with Porter's claim that police acted in bad faith when investigating the murders. But that finding was in no way tantamount to an informal guilty verdict for Porter.

Still, Walter Jones said: "The killer has been sitting in that room right there all day."

Corporation Counsel Mara Georges' office, which hired Jones' law firm of Pugh, Jones, Johnson & Quandt to defend the case, does not agree with Jones.

"Our position is that the charges were dismissed against Porter in a manner indicative of innocence," said Law Department spokeswoman Jennifer Hoyle.

Jones did not return numerous messages left for him at his law firm asking him to elaborate on his statement.

Hoyle dismissed what Jones said as "just his personal opinion," and added: "We aren't planning on issuing an apology."

They should. And so should city aldermen, since Jones was representing them that day.

And they all should hope that Porter doesn't file a defamation suit, an action his attorney, James Montgomery Jr., said is "something to consider" under the circumstances.

Perhaps the opening sentence of this column ought to read: The City of Chicago doesn't owe Anthony Porter any money yet.

Comments

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That incredibly stupid, wrong and just plain asinine remark is going to cost Jones and his law firm of Pugh, Jones, Johnson & Quandt big money in a slander and defamation suit.
On top of that, this should tell the fools at the city's corporation counsel's office to stop hiring outside lawyers for this stuff.
And to everyone else who has the misfortune to have Walter Jones for a lawyer: You are a fool to be his client.
He should go into selling used cars, it's more his speed.

Walter Jones is guilty of a lot more then bad taste. He is guilty of treason to the African American Community, the legal community and everything that is right and fair. He knows damn well that Anthony Porter DID NOT COMMIT any murders and more specificaly he knows that Porter did not kill Green and Hillard in Washington Park.

It is a matter of public record that Alstory Simon committed these murders in front of an eye witness (not more then two feet away) and that he pled guilty to thease murders in an effort to avoid the death penalty.

Jones has sold out to the Daley administration in an effort to continue to recieve extremely large funds from the city of Chicago and more importantly to protect Richie Daley's butt and those of his buddies in the states attorney's office.(BTW why don't someone do an FOI request and find out how much one sells his soul to the city for these days)

If anyone is thinking that the city is not jumping for glee over this verdict, think again. Madison Hobley, Aaron Patterson, Leroy Orange and a few others who spent the better portion of their lives on death row for a crime they didn't commit just found out what the white citizens of Cook County think. Basically that is; your life is worth (beans) and too bad you sat on death row for 16, 18 20 years. We ain't paying you a dime.

Ironically it was juries that were 90% white or better that put them there in the first place. The truth is and always has been that African Americans are never tried by a jury of their peers or anything close to the true racial makeup of this county.Porter once again proves the point.

The media generally pussyfoots around the whole issue of race in these matters. The reality is, that it is almost always about race. It might be 2005 on the calander but it is Selma 1955 at the Daley center.

I have been involved in the criminal justice system since 1974. I have worked all over the world and I can tell all of you that there are two kinds of justice. One for the have's and one for the have not's. That fact is not likely to change anytime soon. No one should be surprised at the Anthony Porter verdict. It was in the bag from day one.

ZORN REPLY-- The commenter is the private investigator who took Simon's confession ijn the Porter case and has been involved in a number of high profile cases of wrongful conviction. As for the haves and have nots, do believe that at his original trial, Anthony Porter was represented by a top-flight pro-bono attorney from a prestigious law firm. Oh. Wait. I'm sorry. That's not true at all. ---
"Although Porter qualified for representation by the Cook County Public Defender's Office, his family thought he would be better off with a private lawyer. They retained Chicago attorney Akim Gursel, agreeing to pay him $10,000. However, they paid him only $3,000. Gursel later said that, due to lack of funds, he stopped investigating. In September of 1983, Porter went on trial before Judge Robert L. Sklodowski and a jury in Cook County Circuit Court. During the trial, Gursel once fell asleep; the transcript shows that Sklodowski awakened him. After the prosecution rested, Gursel called only two alibi witnesses and a photographer who had taken aerial shots of Washington Park. The jury deliberated nine hours before convicting Porter on all counts." -- from http://www.law.northwestern.edu/depts/clinic/wrongful/exonerations/porter.htm

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